The Future Of Search (sort of) Danny Sullivan Editor-In-Chief Search Engine Land http://searchengineland.com
Jan 09, 2016
The Future Of Search(sort of)
Danny SullivanEditor-In-Chief
Search Engine Landhttp://searchengineland.com
The Future? It’s Now!
Hard to predict since two key things I expected to happen HAVE happened
Personalized results… Blended results
Internet Librarian, November 2001…
Read My Mind (Nov. 2001)
Sept. 11 dramatically illustrates the main search challenge – the need to somehow automatically hit the correct dataset Images for search on “pictures of spain” MP3 files for search on “madonna” Movie info for search on Harry Potter
this month
Invisible Tabs (Dec. 2003)
Answer to everything is not a web page
Search engines will begin to hit specialty databases in the right occasion, pushing the right tab behind the scenes Pictures, Buying, News Headlines
Federated Search Hits The Web
Or is it? Meta search Universal Search 3D / Morph Answers Shortcuts
“Blended results” or “Blended search” more generic and clearer…
Google Universal Search: May 07
Automatically queries: Books, images, news, video, local + web
More sources added in the future
Relevancy of each vertical “silo” assessed and measured against others, Google says
Morehttp://searchengineland.com/070516-143312.php
Let’s see…
Ask 3D & “Morph:” June 07
3 “pane” design
3rd pane uses “Morph” algorithm to select relevant verticals Blogs, news, news images, video,
Wikipedia, dictionary, more…
More http://searchengineland.com/070604-211402.php
Let’s see…
Microsoft Live: Sept. 07
Pushing Microsoft Answers
Health, Shopping, Entertainment/Celebrities, Local
Smart Motion Video Previews More
http://searchengineland.com/070927-034138.php
Let’s see…
Yahoo: Oct. 07
Pushing Yahoo Shortcuts Events, music, movies, travel, sports,
health, shopping, businesses, and restaurants
More http://searchengineland.com/071002-012729.php
Let’s see…
Blended Overview
Verticals becoming more prominent Metaphor / presentation still being
worked out
Ask 3D didn’t generate boost; toolbar download did, and now iWon ramp-up
Live saw gains through “Search Club” More on both:
http://searchengineland.com/071001-111050.php
Still, exciting time!
Will Crawlers Survive? (Nov. 2002)
Link analysis saved them from drowning in spam
Now link manipulation has become issue Bloggers: Let’s “googlebomb” to help sites we
like
Site owners: Let’s create artificial link networks
Site owners: Let’s just get links Google “likes”
SearchKing (and others): We got good links for sale!
What’s The Solution (Nov. 2002)
They’ll come up with new link analysis abilities I still believe personalization of results
will come Specialty search may finally now recovered
from the dotcom crash… OriginSearch.com charging per day Scirus.com still going strong
Crawlers may take new lead; Google revamped news search and shopping search expected And help others with targeted paid listings
Personalized & Social Search
Focus on a particular topic, such as news
Reshaping results based on… What you personally do or visit What others you know do or visit What people in aggregate do or visit
Google Personalized Search
Results are reordered based on what’s deemed to be your personal preferences. Pages move up, down, in or out of top 10
Personalization Influencers
Google Personalized Home Page content
Google Bookmarks
Search History (Clicks)
Web History (Visits)…
Search & Web History
Social Search
Eurekster experimented with friend clicks reshaping results in 2004
Yahoo My Web promised to let us tag and use a network to reshape results…
Yahoo My Web
Yahoo My Web
My Web & Old Search Features
Social Search Reality
Neither really has succeeded The Promise & Reality Of Mixing The
Social Graph With Search Engines http://searchengineland.com/070827-121805.php
Eurekster says “swickis” much better Yahoo dropped many features quietly
But what about Facebook?
Facebook & Search
Social graph (ugh) / social network data is potentially useful Watch what others are searching on
Monitor clicks in a more “trusted” environment
Reshape results based on what you friends seem to like
But who are your friends…
Future Facebook?
http://www.dumpfolder.net/?p=193
Facebook & Search
Do you have to filter to “true” friends?
Do you then still need to consider what you’ll share?
Does Facebook instead work on aggregate level?
And what’s the underlying platform? They’ll likely remain dependent on someone else…
Facebook & Search
Go vertical? People search? Plenty in the space
http://searchengineland.com/lands/people-search.php
Or events search Upcoming rival
Others?
Or discovery…
Search Versus Discovery
Search is an on-demand, have particular need to fulfill activity
Discovery is related but less specific in what you want StumbleUpon, Digg
iGoogle related magic tabs
What Else?
Natural Language Search! Sigh
Powerset not out
Hakia.com’s clustering interesting
What Else?
Human refinement! Mahalo.com sometimes feels cluttered
but nice to see the attempt Search Wikia remains to be seen
http://searchengineland.com/061229-193718.php
Overall
Verticals to continue growing Personalized should survive privacy
issues and be helpful Perhaps social will indeed play role Lots of room to grow
Report: 7 Out Of 10 Americans Experience 'Search Engine Fatigue’
Overall
72% experience “search engine fatigue” (either “always,” “usually,” or “sometimes”) when researching
65% percent say they’ve spent two or more hours in a single sitting searching
1000 adults by Kelton Reseach for Autobytel http://searchengineland.com/071023-093541.php
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